U.S. weapons pop up in raids across Ukraine’s border; China hawks call for stockpiles in Taiwan

(Originally published May 25 in “What in the World“) Even as Republicans threaten to bankrupt the U.S. government if the White House won’t agree to spending cuts, the Republican-led committee in the U.S. House of Representatives dedicated to facing down the China threat is lobbying to boost next year’s defense budget with a five-year stockpile of weapons for Taiwan.

The clumsily named Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, headed by Wisconsin Republican Mike Gallagher—a former Marine with a Ph.D. in Cold War policy—on Wednesday made 10 recommendations aimed at deterring an invasion of Taiwan by China. The recommendations include clearing the $19 billion backlog of weapons already sold to Taiwan and granting the Pentagon permission to sign multi-year procurement contracts to establish a stockpile of armaments for the self-ruled island, which China and Washington still officially agree is part of China.

The U.S. military already maintains a similar stockpile in Israel. If you’re interested in reading more on why China and the United States find themselves poised for war over Taiwan and what has been done to defend Taiwan against what Washington erroneously believes is imminent invasion, please read the longer discourse on that topic from April 7.

Another week, another U.S. policy adjustment nudging America closer to direct confrontation with Russia.

The latest turn is very subtle and revolves around how the Administration’s early insistence that U.S. aid to Ukraine was meant only to repel Russia’s invasion, but not to wage war on Russia itself.

Early in the war, U.S. President Joe Biden promised that U.S. might ship weapons to Ukraine, but that it wouldn’t “enable or encourage” Ukraine to launch attacks inside Russia. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeated that message when Ukraine in December began using its own drones to launch attacks inside Russia. The drones weren’t U.S.-made or U.S.-supplied, so the U.S. still couldn’t be accused of enabling Ukraine to take the war to Russia, however much doing so would make sense to Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian missiles launched from across the border.

Crucially, Ukraine’s drone attacks couldn’t be interpreted by Russian President Vladimir Putin as tantamount to an attack by the U.S. or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization against Russian territory. U.S. officials have worried that such an event might prompt Putin to escalate the war by launching direct attacks against NATO, deploy nuclear weapons, or both. In secret cables leaked on the internet, the Pentagon has also worried that attacks on Russia using U.S.-supplied weaponry could prompt China into direct support of Russia in the war.

Washington has stressed its efforts to ensure that Ukraine doesn’t misuse American weaponry to attack Russia. When last year Biden reversed his position on supplying Ukraine with Himars missile launchers, he wrote that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had promised not to use them to launch missiles across the border into Russia. This week, when he revealed that he had reversed his position on supplying U.S.-made F-16s to Ukraine, he again said Zelensky had promised not fly the F-16s into Russian airspace.

But Zelensky made no such promises about other U.S.-supplied weapons. Last month, Ukrainian forces began shelling Russian positions across the border in Bryansk province, presumably using American howitzers firing American 155mm shells. And this week, another Russian border province, Belgorod was invaded by Ukrainian forces. U.S. and Ukrainian officials have said the attacks were staged by a group of Russian partisans, not Ukraine’s military. Indeed, the Free Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps claimed to have liberated several areas during their attacks before being captured or repelled.

Both groups are made up of Russian nationals fighting in Ukraine against Russia’s invading forces. But they aren’t a rogue group of rebels. Like other groups of foreign fighters in Ukraine, both the Free Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps are part of Ukraine’s International Legion, which includes American and British volunteers and is commanded by Ukrainian officers and overseen by Ukraine’s military.

Complicating matters further for Washington is that the Ukrainian-controlled Russians were driving at least three International MaxxPro MRAPs, or Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicles, made by Michigan-based Navistar Defense and shipped to Ukraine as part of its $36.9 billion in military aid. Two of the Mraps have been captured by Russian forces. Russian authorities also released photos of abandoned U.S.-made Humvees.

While The New York Times said it had confirmed the provenance of the Mraps, the U.S. State Dept. said it wasn’t so sure yet. “I will say that we’re skeptical at this time of the veracity of these reports,” said State Dept. spokesman Matthew Miller.

And even though he was claiming that Washington wasn’t sure the Russian attackers had used Mraps, or how they might have obtained them, Miller for some reason neglected to say whether Ukraine’s military had ordered the cross-border attacks or whether the Pentagon officials helping Ukraine coordinate its counterattacks knew about them. Instead, Miller repeated the mantra that the U.S. didn’t “encourage or enable” strikes inside Russia.

Miller then added a new and vital caveat to Biden’s promise not to enable attacks inside Russia and his assurances that Zelensky had promised not to use American weapons to do so. Miller added: “But as we’ve also said, it is up to Ukraine to decide how to conduct this war.”

And with that, Miller introduced a novel semantic cover for whatever Ukraine does with U.S. weaponry and washed Washington’s hands of responsibility for it. The Administration has previously said it is up to Ukraine to determine the terms of any peace deal with Russia, but it doesn’t appear to have given Ukraine a blank cheque in how to use U.S. weapons. That appears now to have changed. Wherever they end up and however they’re used, hey, at the end of the day it’s up to Ukraine.

So Biden may be in charge of which weapons to send Ukraine. But when it comes to setting the pace of U.S. involvement and the extent of U.S. commitment, he handed the keys to Kyiv a long time ago. Zelensky is firmly in the driver’s seat.